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Sunday, January 27, 2019

During
the past three and half decades, various governments at the centre introduced
several crop insurance schemes for the farmers to lessen the risks (partial or
full) involved due to natural calamities and crop diseases. In 1985, in its very
first attempt, the Government of India (GoI) launched Comprehensive Crop Insurance
Scheme (CCIS) with a mandate to a national coverage. In 1999, CCIS was replaced
with a new scheme called National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS). To
implement this scheme, w.e.f. April 1, 2003, the Government designated
Agriculture Insurance Company of India Ltd. (AIC), a public sector company, as
its implementing agency. Further, another scheme, Weather Based Crop Insurance
Scheme (WBCIS) was launched to cover the farmers in 20 states with a mandate to
provide insurance against inconsistent climatic conditions (drought, flood,
untimely rainfall, variations in temperature, frost, etc.)from the Kharif
season 2007. With the purpose of insuring farmers, another attempt was made,
when GoI introduced Modified National Agriculture Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) from
the Rabi season 2010-11. The Scheme was launched on pilot basis in 50
districts of the country. Again, from the Rabi season 2013-14, the GoI
started a new farmers’ insurance scheme – National Crop Insurance Programme
(NCIP) through merging the MNAIS and WBCIS. But, on the request of the state
governments, NAIS continued till the Rabi season 2015-16. Onwards the Kharif
season 2016, the BJP government replaced NAIS and NCIP with the Pradhan
Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) and a restructuring of WBCIS was also made. So, the
newly launched scheme, PMFBY, is just a continuation of earlier existing schemes
with a few minor restructuring.

Monday, January 21, 2019

Since independence and even earlier, India has been
characterized by an enduring duality in which the reality of an inegalitarian and
oppression-ridden society has co-existed with a widespread and even growing urge
for equality and justice. The inequalities prevailing in Indian society are
multi-dimensional in which new ones emerging with time are intertwined in
complex but mutually reinforcing ways with those handed down from the past. Caste
and gender discrimination are knitted into the fabric of a society whose
economic domain is also marked by sharp inequalities in control over resources and
exploitative relationships. Most Indians are subject to at least one among
several inequalities and oppressions, an overwhelming majority of them to more
than one acting in tandem and a considerable part to all of them.In the absence of changes that would address
the structural roots of these, affirmative action in the form of reservations
in education and public employment - for members of social groups who are
disadvantaged by the social realities from accessing the limited opportunities
for these - has been the only substantive response of the Indian state to the demands
for equality and justice. The creation and development of this reservation
policy and its implementation has also been impaired by the resistance from the
more privileged sections of Indian society and their power.

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

For the past three
decades the working people of our country had suffered the most in terms of
their share in high growth that India experienced barring recent episodes of
slowing down due to demonetization or hasty tax reforms introduced by the
current government. It is now becoming a cause of concern primarily because
such declining share of the vast majority of the working population ultimately leads
to rising inequality and therefore even international agencies such as World
Bank and IMF, those had been otherwise great votaries of liberalization recognize the simple fact of demand constraint setting in,ultimately creating
barriers to profitability and growth. The worker is also a buyer and working
people’s share of consumption expenditure in additional unit of income is
generally greater than that of the rich, so relative decline of the workers’
buying capacity has its impact on the market, it dampens expectation of profit
for private investors and hence investment and growth. In the advanced
capitalist countries ‘technology unemployment’ is on the rise, use of
artificial intelligence, internet of things and robots are going to replace
repetitive jobs which has hardly hit particularly middle level jobs and the
low skilled workers are at a disadvantageous position worldwide. Various studies suggest that in the next two decades 47 per cent of jobs
in the US and 57 per cent in the OECD are at the risk of automation. There is also the
effect of cheapening of finance which leads to higher capital intensity and
lower requirement of labour employment in production.

Editorial

How do we see the world? It is neither a gaze, nor is it to invent the predetermined truth, it is to intervene from a position. Our seeing is changing at the same time and without any claim to excavate the unadulterated truth that never existed.
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